Ezra 2:68 in 6 translations
6 distinct wordings, grouped by what each translation is trying to do. Differences from the King James text are marked below.
Early modern English
Seventeenth-century wording and sentence shape. Familiar, rhythmic, and the version most quotations you have heard are taken from.
And some of the chief of the fathers, when they came to the house of the LORD which is at Jerusalem, offered freely for the house of God to set it up in his place:
1611 / 1769 · Public domain · The Authorised Version, revised to the 1769 Blayney text. Includes the Apocrypha as printed in 1611.
Literal, word-for-word
Follows Hebrew and Greek word order and grammar closely, even where the English becomes stiff. Useful for seeing what the underlying sentence is doing.
And some of the heads of fathers` [houses], when they came to the house of Jehovah which is in Jerusalem, offered willingly for the house of God to set it up in its place:
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
And some of the chief fathers, when they came to the house of Jehovah which is at Jerusalem, offered freely for the house of God to set it up in its place.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
And some of the heads of the fathers in their coming in to the house of Jehovah that is in Jerusalem, have offered willingly for the house of God, to establish it on its base;
1898 · Public domain · The most extreme word-for-word rendering here, keeping Hebrew and Greek tense and word order at the cost of natural English.
Modern English
Contemporary vocabulary and punctuation, aiming for the sentence a present-day reader would write while staying close to the source.
Some of the heads of fathers’ households, when they came to Yahweh’s house which is in Jerusalem, offered willingly for God’s house to set it up in its place.
2000s · Public domain · A modern-English update of the ASV. Reads close to contemporary speech while staying in the literal tradition. Includes the Apocrypha.
Simplified English
Built from a deliberately small vocabulary so the sense stays reachable for new readers and non-native speakers. Trades nuance for clarity.
And some of the heads of families, when they came to the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem, gave freely of their wealth for the building up of the house of God in its place:
1949 · Public domain · Written with roughly a thousand basic English words plus a small Bible vocabulary. The plainest reading available here.
What changes between the King James and modern wording
The modern rendering is printed below with every word that differs from the King James text marked, so the actual divergence is visible rather than left for you to spot.
some of the heads of fathers’ households, when they came to Yahweh’s house which is in Jerusalem, offered willingly for God’s house to set it up in its place:
Word-for-word swaps
- chief→heads
- fathers→fathers’
- the→Yahweh’s
- at→in
- freely→willingly
- the→God’s
The verses either side
King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.
Not shown for this verse: Open English Bible (US), Open English Bible (Commonwealth). Those translations are still incomplete in the corpus, and empty cards are not padded in.